Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 147

Noometry
Hi. User:Noophelia 2.0 created the article Noometry, but it looks to me a if this is only used by one researcher, Alexei Eryomin, while the article and its many sources give the impression that this is a more common field of research and science. I don't know enough about this and don't have full access to most sources, so perhaps some people here can take a look and see if the article indeed has problems or not. Fram (talk) 09:35, 25 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't remember anyone mentioning an interest in a similar subject, but maybe one of our psych folks could take a look? Markworthen or Iss246, maybe?  It seems very suspicious that the measurement of the mind would be a field of study for only the last 15 years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 25 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, only very recently in 2005-2015, Suzana Herculano-Houzel was able to count the number of neurons. Also quite recently there are new authoritative sources on the number of synapses in the human brain - List of animals by number of neurons Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 19:12, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Herculano-Houzel's work never mentions "noometry" and has never been described in terms of "noometry". Much of what is described on that page is real research, but it's WP:SYNTH to call it noometry. Bondegezou (talk) 19:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have started Articles for deletion/Noometry. Bondegezou (talk) 19:24, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The topic is more related to WikiProject Neuroscience, than to psychology Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 19:31, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Whether the mind exists at all, as something separate from the brain, is a matter for philosophy, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also: Iztwoz, Lova Falk, Mark viking, Tryptofish – could any of you take a look? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * (Responding to ping.) I looked and something that stands out to me is that the editor who started the page seems to be focused almost entirely on promoting the work of Alexei Eryomin. It is possible that this is something for WP:COIN. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:15, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The term "psychometric" in psychometric theory comes from the Greek and pertains to measuring the mind. Psychometric theory has a long history. And it is still developing, including innovations such as exploratory structural equation modeling and item-response theory. Psychometrics goes way back to Darwin. I don't know about noometry. I am not familiar with the term. Iss246 (talk) 02:57, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I note there is very similar content across noometry, noogenesis and Alexei Eryomin, with all 3 articles full of citations, but it is not always clear that the citations are actually about the topics at hand. Clean up across all seems warranted. Bondegezou (talk) 08:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Might there also be some sock-puppetry between and ? Bondegezou (talk) 08:11, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The term "psychometric" - Psyche - soul... Science is developing, look World Brain, Global Brain, Collective intelligence there is a question of new dimensions of intellect, mind. Yes, indeed, the measurements took place in the XXI century. The number of neurons in the brain has only recently become known! Indeed, there are few publications on combining the results of quantitative measurements into one. Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 08:49, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Alexei Eryomin has just started following me on ResearchGate, so this rather suggests that WP:COIN does apply, as per. Bondegezou (talk) 08:57, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Alexei Eryomin is Aeremin the creator of Alexei Eryomin page. Noophilia emerged in April 2020 seemingly focused on promoting Alexei Eryomin and related works. Highly suggestive of 's and 's WP:COIN and sock-puppetry. As for content - bit baffling probably could be dealt with by Psychometrics as suggested by .--Iztwoz (talk) 09:19, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Psychometrics - "The field is concerned with the objective measurement of skills and knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational achievement". Psychometry is not related to the description of intelligent systems, through the results of objective calculations of the number of components of which they consist, the number of connections between these components and the speed of communication between them. Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 10:53, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear colleagues! I sincerely thank You for your efforts and reviews of the article. I kindly ask You to help and transfer the results of measurements, quantifications, and calculations, that are significant in your opinion, to special articles!... I will also be grateful to You for Your mutual assistance in the general highly-motivated and intellectual work, related to the unfolding of the World Brain. Sincerely, I wish you health and creative success! Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 11:43, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like it may make sense to send multiple pages to AfD or to make them redirects to merges. I see some of that has already started, and I'll leave it to other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This edit references discussion on the Russian-language Wikipedia to limit some of these sorts of additions. Bondegezou (talk) 10:14, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, there were marks on ruWiki: "In another language section there is a more complete article Noogenèse (fr.)." Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 13:06, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , I've redirected noogenesis to noosphere, since it doesn't appear to be a term separately notable outside the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 13:46, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , This is not accurate. Noogenesis and noosphere are different terms, proposed by different authors, at different times, in different publications. Noogenesis is an independent concept, according to which Google scholar provides 926 results of links to authoritative sources . Noogenesis is also widespread and developed in monographs and books issued on Google book - examples in English and in Russian . Those who wish, can simply improve the article noogenesis. Noophelia 2.0 (talk) 15:04, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Google Scholar includes everything it can find, including non-peer-reviewed material, predatory journals, random websites, etc. It is not a reliable indicator for these purposes. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:32, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Noosphere and noogenesis are different concepts. It may not be appropriate to combine these concepts and redirect the search for "noogenesis" to the article "noosphere". See "Talk" Noosphere ירמיהו - פרוגנוזה (talk) 07:24, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Given the results of the vote, I am inclined to believe that the development and general recognition of "noometry" is in the future... To preserve some of the objective data confirmed by references to authoritative sources, I moved some of it to the article "noogenesis". At the same time, it became clear that "noogenesis" began to be studied scientifically by medical doctors since 1871 - see the discussion ירמיהו - פרוגנוזה (talk) 20:30, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Infobox drug: FDA, EMA broken links

 * See also Infobox drug


 * Detail issues
 * @RexxS, the broken-links problems are going to affect Wikidata, too, and thereby lots of Wikipedias. Do you think there is any chance of automating their repair? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Wrong place IMO. FDA and EMA broken links is a different problem, better be discussed at Infobox drug. (It's complicated, and I am still sorry we could not solve it. Looks like it requires a new ID, per drug, for each site. -DePiep (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at Aspirin's infobox and, I'm not finding any mention of FDA or EMA. Searching  on Google shows a motley collection of documents which are arranged by paths like /mrl-report/ or /overview/ or /press-release/, etc. which are fine for SEO, but useless for finding a consistent . The FDA is no better and actually uses sub-domains in some cases like https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/203697Orig1s000lbl.pdf which again makes creating a formatter url a nightmare. The alternative is to keep a lookup table of the best links for each drug –  a mammoth task (although we did it for ICD codes). I'm not sure what information we want to link to on either of the FDA or EMA sites, as I can't find much that isn't already available in the article body or infobox already. IMHO, WP:ELNO applies in these cases. Sorry to be pessimistic. --RexxS (talk) 19:23, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for sharing that we have the same nightmares ;-) . EMA publishess, a spreadsheet. Looks like a INN:commercial-name:chemical-name in an n:m:p relationship. -DePiep (talk) 21:00, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * So it's difficult but not impossible. I assume that means that it won't be fixed this weekend.     The FDA link in the infobox at Aspirin takes me to https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/daf/ (a search page), but I can't find anything about plain old aspirin (or acetylsalicylic acid) there.  What page do we actually want? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:18, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * From the EPAR (European public assessment reports) spreadsheet, I think we could generate the url from the name most of the time, assuming we get the name right! There are about 1500 "Human category" entries, and a Lua module to generate urls like  from   with little or trivial processing, although our article is at the INN name, Umeclidinium bromide/vilanterol. We would need some lookups for the exceptions like   →   but that's do-able. Let me know if you want me to do some work on producing a conversion module to return the EPAR urls, working from either the INN or "medicine name". You can have it this weekend if you're in a hurry.  --RexxS (talk) 21:34, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Aren't I always in a hurry to have other people do work that I don't want to do myself? It'd be great to have these EMA links fixed.
 * I'm not sure that there is a good answer for the FDA site. I tried Hydroxychloroquine instead of aspirin, and it returned obviously relevant search results, but there are 15 of them, and I don't think we could pick just one of them as "the" link.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * (ec, w/Rexx) To be clear for everybody: today both FDA and EMA sites have issues wrt automated access from . Their ELs both are broken, really. Topic is the same incidentally, solutions will differ.
 * At Template talk:Infobox drug, last year raised the issue more then once (good). It was about how to open an FDA-sitepage-about-aspirin, and which of FDA-aspirin-pages to open. Parallel Q's for EMA.
 * (Sorry, I am running out of time now. One could search the latest Template talk:Infobox drug archives.). -DePiep (talk) 21:46, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I've knocked up a rough demo of how it could be done by brute force using lookups in Module:EPAR and Module:EPAR/data. There are lots of glitches, but generally it is able to take either a proprietary or non-proprietary name and return the url of a report like this: It's case-insensitive, but there's all sorts of crap in the EPAR table (you can see a slightly cleaned-up version in Module:EPAR/data). Also there are multiple reports for INN names like 'filgrastim' and I'm only returning one. I don't really know how useful it is likely to be in the long run, but it's an interesting exercise. --RexxS (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC) fix ping --RexxS (talk) 00:49, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * proprietary:  →
 * non-proprietary:  →


 * Thank you, @RexxS! That looks great, and I hope that we can get it into the infoboxes as soon as possible.  Even if it's not perfect, it's much better than what we've got right now.  It can be rearranged into whichever boxes later.
 * Since I'm apparently getting what I want today, then I will also ask for you to code up an enduring peace in the Middle East, a functional vaccine distribution system for the COVID-19 vaccines, and a really good recipe that will use up four egg yolks. 😉 WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * My thumb is upo here, . Do I understand it does not need a separate, dedicated ID? As in: you can pull it from existing INN names already provided etc? -DePiep (talk) 01:31, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

In addition to the EPAR drug page consider adding a link to the EU Register of medicinal products for human use drug page. --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 06:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've done some cleaning up on the EPAR data. The data is organised by proprietary name (since that is the medicine submitted for approval), and I've eliminated 10 duplicates where there was a refusal/withdrawal followed by a later approval, by removing the outdated version, so the proprietary names are now unique. There are multiple values of non-proprietary names which refer to the same report, so I've associated each non-proprietary name with a corresponding proprietary name (many-to-one) and the function  now returns a list of the proprietary names, each linked to its relevant EPA report. Some examples of testing are at Module talk:EPAR . The Lua executes in less than 0.1 second and uses less than 2MB (out of 52MB) of Lua memory per page.
 * I've downloaded the "Union Register of medicinal products for human use" spreadsheet and I'll have a look at whether we can isolate meaningful links from it. --RexxS (talk) 17:57, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've made Module:EURMP and Module:EURMP/data for the data at the European Union Register of medicinal products. All of this needs documenting sometime. Here are a couple of examples of how you can derive an external link to the detail page from the brand name:
 * The name is case-insensitive, but beyond that, you have to use the name in the way that the register uses it, otherwise you get nothing:
 * In case there are applications that want just a raw url, I've made a function to return only the url:
 * Let me know if it's useful. --RexxS (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice work. Another piece of info we could extract from that data is the year of approval -- the middle number in "EU/1/21/1529", for example. --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 23:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I was hoping that the main module would attract further edits to make new functions as people found more applications. The year of approval can be extracted with a similar match-pattern . I don't know whether there's any use for the "Marketing Authorisation Holder", but I left it in the data anyway, and it would be easy to also export that from Module:EURMP/data if required. --RexxS (talk) 01:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Approval year is an excellent idea. Thanks for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In case there are applications that want just a raw url, I've made a function to return only the url:
 * Let me know if it's useful. --RexxS (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice work. Another piece of info we could extract from that data is the year of approval -- the middle number in "EU/1/21/1529", for example. --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 23:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I was hoping that the main module would attract further edits to make new functions as people found more applications. The year of approval can be extracted with a similar match-pattern . I don't know whether there's any use for the "Marketing Authorisation Holder", but I left it in the data anyway, and it would be easy to also export that from Module:EURMP/data if required. --RexxS (talk) 01:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Approval year is an excellent idea. Thanks for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice work. Another piece of info we could extract from that data is the year of approval -- the middle number in "EU/1/21/1529", for example. --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 23:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I was hoping that the main module would attract further edits to make new functions as people found more applications. The year of approval can be extracted with a similar match-pattern . I don't know whether there's any use for the "Marketing Authorisation Holder", but I left it in the data anyway, and it would be easy to also export that from Module:EURMP/data if required. --RexxS (talk) 01:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Approval year is an excellent idea. Thanks for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Server technical problem adding request?
I was trying to add a request to the project, via the add request tool and encountered an error that says "Wikimedia Cloud Services Error No proxy is configured for this host name. Please see our documentation on Wikitech for more information on configuring a proxy." I also get the same error while trying to view the full list of requests from these links on the project request section: https://wpx.wmflabs.org/requests/en/add and https://wpx.wmflabs.org/requests/en/search?searchtype=wikiproject&searchterm=WikiProject+Medicine&language=en Is this a known issue at the moment? Thank you. Mlepisto (talk) 20:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * thank you for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:11, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * "wpx.wmflabs.org" doesn't seem to exist. @Quiddity (WMF), I thought it might just be something that needed a restart, but I think this is beyond me.  Any idea who we could ask about it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @WhatamIdoing perhaps here? https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Cloud_Services_Introduction#Communication_and_support if you go to https://wfmlabs.org it redirects to this page. I'm out of my depth on the Wiki part of this, but it does seem that the server is up and responding, so it is likely a code or configuration error. See ping reply indicating both DNS works and the address responds to ping: PING wpx.wmflabs.org (185.15.56.49): 56 data bytes: 64 bytes from 185.15.56.49: icmp_seq=0 ttl=46 time=48.042 ms
 * DrGvago (talk) 20:50, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, IIUC, I believe that tool has been unavailable since late 2019, per the last few updates at WP:WPX and the related entry in this listing. If a new tool-developer person is found to adopt (and maintain) the tool, it could potentially be restarted, however I'm not familiar with how complex any of the code is or if there are any important bugs (or unlisted bugs) that would need to be addressed. You could try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X to see if anyone is planning on working on it. I hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Any reason for DrGvago signing with another name Mlepisto? --Iztwoz (talk) 15:57, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I was contacted off wiki and due to this desired to change my username DrGvago (talk) 16:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Navbox for medical guidelines
After discovering various medical editing guidelines one at a time, and noticing they didn't have a navbox connecting them together, I drafted up a navbox for our medical guidelines today. It's located at Template:Wikipedia biomedical editing. See any major problems with the name, the pages included, etc. before I move this to Template space and add it to the corresponding pages? Hopefully this helps editors new to MEDRS (a very complicated corner of Wikipedia) quickly find and read all the relevant guidelines and essays. Also, any pages I shouldn't add this to? My initial idea is to add it to everything except this talk page. Thanks for your feedback. – Novem Linguae (talk) 09:08, 2 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Have you considered putting it in the same (sidebar) format as Template:Guideline list?
 * Also, as a side note, navboxes are invisible to most readers (anyone on a mobile device, which is most page views). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Autism and development criteria
I’m not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask but I have found a bunch of sources online saying that in order to be diagnosed with Autism an individual must have symptoms present in early development.

I was wondering if y’all had any thoughts on this. CycoMa (talk) 06:36, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Here are the sources

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html

https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5 CycoMa (talk) 06:37, 3 February 2021 (UTC)


 * This, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  06:52, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that, I must have misread the article CycoMa (talk) 06:56, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It is easy to misunderstand; presenting in childhood is not the same as detected in childhood. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  06:58, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In general, all developmental disorders must show some signs or symptoms during "the developmental period", aka childhood (variously defined for this purpose as being anywhere before the age of 16 to 25). It doesn't matter when the diagnostic process happens, so long as there is some evidence about what happened during the person's early years.
 * This definition does lead to the occasional stupid edge case (e.g., if a person has an IQ of 110 before a traumatic brain injury, and an IQ of 65 afterwards, then whether that person qualifies for a diagnosis of intellectual disability depends upon the person's age at the time of injury), but overall the rule of thumb is pretty useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Vachette Pathology
Is this notable? Really? It's been tagged for issues for over 11 years now. It's time to fix it or get rid of it. Based on normal editing processes, this will be nominated for deletion within days. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearian (talk • contribs)
 * yes agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Dear WikiProject Medicine members: You're invited! Coronavirus in New York City: Translate-A-Thon - ONLINE - February 6th, 2021 -
--Wil540 art (talk) 21:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Which article(s) deal the most with the history of scientific understanding of waterborne diseases?
I have recently tried to streamline some content about how the scientific understanding behind waterborne diseases, such as cholera, developed over time. I found that the same or similar information was described in several articles, for example in waterborne diseases, sanitation, toilet, germ theory of diseases, history of water supply and sanitation. At this stage, I felt that the best place to put the bulk of the information is at history of water supply and sanitation and then just leave short(er) pieces at the other articles - which I have done now. Do you agree with that? Have I missed any other medicine articles that also talk about the same thing? A lot of the content seems to be about the work of John Snow which then gets repeated at germ theory of diseases and 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. I am a bit unsure if history of water supply and sanitation is the best primary location either. Should that one focus on the development of infrastructure only? However, that is intertwined with discoveries on how lack of sanitation makes people sick. The whole thing is also related to hygiene which also has a section on history of hygiene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene#History) but it mainly just talks about bath houses and bathing. I also looked at the articles on diarrhea and cholera to see if they have history sections. Diarrhea has no history section]] and cholera does have a history section where the different pandemics are described. - Have I missed any other medicine/history articles that I should include in my streamlining efforts? EMsmile (talk) 12:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I believe you've covered everything...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

RoseMarie Toussaint
Hi. I recently encountered Rose Marie Toussaint, MD and looked her up to find information and found her Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Marie_Toussaint. I don't think I would be up to the task of trying to edit it and get it accurate but there is much there that is out of date or not correct. It appears she has not been practicing as a surgeon for some time--several years? Not sure. She appears to have transitioned from transplant surgery to some form of general medical practice with a very heavy emphasis on "alternative" medicine and sale of supplements and the like through her website https://drrmtoussaint.com/about/. The entry appears to need a lot of editing and additions to be adequate and accurate. Macavity1971 (talk) 22:37, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * needs alot of trimming..IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:58, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Credé procedure
Please fix the issues tagged. Is it still performed? Can we use older citations? Bearian (talk) 20:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Had to get up from the computer in the middle of updating it, pardon it's sorry state. Back at it in an hour or so. Ajpolino (talk) 23:46, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * and look like the most recent reviews.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Tags mostly addressed. Still trying to find a source for whether this is still done in places where gonorrhea is more common and prenatal screening less accessible. I'm always surprised (though I shouldn't be any longer) to find that many of these "older" clinical practices have little-to-no solid data to support them, per WAID's reviews above. Ajpolino (talk) 02:48, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Articles needing links
WikiProject Medicine/Newsletter/February 2021/Backlog has made a list of 65 articles that (probably) need more links to other articles. This is a fun and easy task for most editors. The process is:


 * Pick any article from the list.
 * Improve the article by making  to other articles.
 * Remove the template at the top about needing more links.
 * Mark it off the list.

That's it! You can make a significant difference for this project even if you only have five or ten minutes online today. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Sandbox organiser
Hi all

I've been working on a tool for the past few months that you may find useful. Sandbox organiser is a set of tools to help you better organise your draft articles and other pages in your userspace. It also includes areas to keep your to do lists, bookmarks, list of tools. You can customise your sandbox organiser to add new features and sections. Once created you can access it simply by clicking the sandbox link at the top of the page. You can create and then customise your own sandbox organiser just by clicking the button on the page. All ideas for improvements and other versions would be really appreciated.

Huge thanks to and  for their work on the technical parts, without them it wouldn't have happened.

John Cummings (talk) 10:48, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * very helpful, thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:11, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Button surgery
This "button-face kitty" is a bit of a news-of-the-weird item, but I wonder whether there's a name for this, and if the surgical technique could be mentioned in any existing article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

MEDLEAD
More input is needed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles. Crossroads -talk- 06:48, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

A slimmer, more reader-friendly drugbox?


Hi all, looking at Ivermectin I see the infobox is provided by Drugbox and includes all kinds of links and data that are relevant only to specialists and probably uninterpretable to most readers. For disease articles, we've split these functions into Infobox medical condition which goes at the top of most disease articles with more reader-friendly information, and Medical resources in the External Links section with links to specialist resources. Similarly, for organisms we've split to Taxobox and Taxonbar. I'd like to mock up a similar setup for articles on medicines, at the very least to use at Ivermectin, but perhaps to deploy more broadly if folks are interested. I started mixing chunks of Medical resources and Drugbox at a new Drug links, but I'm afraid I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm more likely to create some kind of Frankenstein's monster than anything usable. Any chance someone with more technical skills wouldn't mind helping me out? Alternatively, if you think this is just a stupid idea, you can let me know here and save me some time. Thanks in advance! Ajpolino (talk) 00:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think it's important for WikiProject Pharmacology and WikiProject Chemistry folks to be involved. Looking at Aspirin, it seems to me that the external links could be moved to the ==External links== section, and that it would also be possible to split the chemical, physical, and pharmacokinetic information into a separate box, to be displayed in the first relevant section.  But:  there is also Template:Chembox, and maybe what's needed is to just have two separate infoboxes, with no overlapping parameters and a clear, stated expectation that nearly every article about a small-molecule drug will contain both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * DePiep, you did a lot of the work on the existing templates. What do you think about this idea? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, a grand redesign might be due. Like, Rethink By WP:INFOBOX principles, at least. ( is waiting too ;-) ). I'll reply more later on. Thanks for pinging me. -DePiep (talk) 19:58, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Support - a slimmer infobox would be more consistent with MOS. Bondegezou (talk) 20:28, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I would be very cautious in removing too much detail from the drug infobox. One very important class of readers are experts who contribute to the articles. If you dumb down the infobox too much, experts will be less likely to read and contribute to articles. I am also generally opposed to splitting the infobox. Experts and general readers alike are less like to notice information if moved to the bottom. At the same time, there are some pretty exoteric links that probably could be removed. Boghog (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Certainly we're trying to balance the needs of diverse readers. But currently it seems Drugbox is almost exclusively targeting experts, and is somewhat outside the spirit of WP:Infoboxes. The top of the page is prime real estate, so I think it's fair for us to separate out the facts that are "so important that their presence at the top helps summarize the page at a glance" from those that are "important facts to some, but can be found elsewhere on the page". Most stuff should fall into the latter category, which is not to cast any disrespect on the facts themselves, or the folks that use them. Also, I think it'd be nice for us to consider adding some human-readable fields, as Infobox medical condition does (see e.g. Influenza), but I understand that's a further pressure on limited space. Ajpolino (talk) 00:21, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand the overall goal to be "relocating" rather than "removing" information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also I quite like WAID's idea above of spinning out the physical/chemical numbers into a separate box to be displayed in the Chemistry section! Ajpolino (talk) 05:52, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Ajpolino that the top of the article is prime estate and should focus on key facts. Many of the codes in that page are merely the primary key index in some database table, not actually a fact about the drug. We wouldn't expect a list of ISBNs at the top of a Harry Potter book article.
 * While we are discussing the box, I would also suggest we remove some of the tedious boilerplate text that litters the lead of many drug articles: the presence in the WHO list of essential medicines (and whether it is core or complementary) should IMO be a field in the info box. The estimated US prescription sales/rank for year XXXX should also move to the infobox, just as some infoboxes show passenger numbers at terminals. The sales figures are mere data not information. I, as a reader, have no comprehension of whether three million prescriptions is a lot, or a little, nor care a drug is 176th rather than 177th in sales in the US. That sort of data needs interpretation and WP:WEIGHT (that someone, in print, finds it notable to mention the high or low sales) in order to deserve lead-prose placement. That stuff was added simply because one editor had it to hand and was editing the lead: it isn't present in any body text. -- Colin°Talk 10:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Came here from the link at template talk:infobox drug. I 100% concur with Boghog about the importance of some of the identifiers and all of the technical information in the drugbox to both specialists and non-specialist readers who are literate in pharmacology. I also agree with him about the removal of certain identifiers; a minority of the ones commonly provided in the drugbox are garbage links for most drugs IMO.
 * IIRC, one of your justifications for not including a GoodRx link in the infobox was that the target page only provided information and utility (drug coupons) relevant to US consumers. You stated above: The estimated US prescription sales/rank for year XXXX should also move to the infobox. Did your views on this change in the meantime? I am not active on Wikipedia, so if you reply to me, ping me or I probably won't see it.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 12:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I won't speak for Colin, but personally, I'd prefer a global sales rank. Knowing whether a drug is common or unusual is informative.  (It's also not "personally actionable" the way that a price could be.)  However, if all we've got is US-only popularity, then I'm inclined to keep the information as being better than nothing.  I'm less certain about putting it in the infobox, though.  WikiProject Pharmacology/Style guide says to put it in an ===Economics=== subsection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree global figures would be preferable, but unlikely to exist. Those US figures are actually just an estimate based on sampling, with some data cleansing and some big holes in their data, so our text claiming X was the n most commonly prescribed drug in the US with m annual sales, is actually misleading. It would probably be more accurate to say "ClinCalc estimate sales of m in the US in 2017, placing it nth place among prescription medicines" or something like that. I guess I suggested infobox because it is a number and so I was treating the box like an Excel column. Having it in a box does make it easier to find the corresponding figure from one article to the next, but to be honest, anyone doing comparison of sales figures from one drug to the next would be strongly advised to do that on the source website. Also an infobox makes it harder to explain that the numbers are just some website's estimates. I'm really not convinced nearly any of our readers will care about it: it needs interpreting and context to be properly encyclopedic. Moving those sentences to the Economics section would be a good move, though perhaps it would cut down the effort if we simply removed those sentences past some threshold in the ranking. A comment that a drug was estimated to be ranked 176th in 2017 in one country in the world, is not IMO worth wasting our readers time with. -- Colin°Talk 11:28, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * This (and infobox chemical) are two of my most detested infoboxes. I reckon the information is completely inaccessible to most readers without a degree in that subject. My personal opinion is that it is very important that there should be some field that lists the common uses of the medication, and some field that describes the typical methods of administration (eg intravenous, subcutaneous, oral) for all medications (not just gene therapy). I feel particularly strongly about describing common uses because, to me, that is the number one thing me and, I think, most people think about --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:41, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think those are both great ideas. It looks like there's currently a field for typical method of administration. Funny enough, unless I'm just not seeing it, there's not currently a field for common uses, which seems it would be the most important information to have in the infobox. Ajpolino (talk) 03:05, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Common uses? Or approved indications?  If we wanted to step beyond "antibiotics are commonly used to treat bacterial infections", that would require finding a source that spoke directly about the commonness of prescribers' intents, which might be difficult.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:27, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm I'm not sure. I'm guessing (though I don't have a ready example) that some drugs are approved for indications that they're no longer widely used for. I think the most useful parameter would answer "what is this drug used for?" rather than "what does this drug have regulatory approval for?". That said, the two questions probably have the same answer in most cases. So perhaps either will be fine and we can deal with the edge cases individually. Ajpolino (talk) 04:18, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We could try to restrict the parameter only to obvious cases (antibiotics for infections, etc.), but there the desire to fill in all the options can be strong. Maybe a reasonable rule would be that if it's disputed on either factual or Due weight grounds, then it must have a MEDRS-style source in the infobox.  Do you think that would work?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We already have Drug class field, which has e.g. "Anticonvulsant" or "Tricyclic antidepressant" and these are generally wikilinked to allowed readers unfamiliar with the terse classification type to go to the article and read a longer more lay-friendly version of that. Doesn't that meet the need? I don't know how good the sourcing on this field tends to be, but the ATC code is effectively an encrypted form of the same thing, and could be used as an authority on deciding which primary use or uses a drug has, without Wikipedians doing battle on the talk page about which is important. -- Colin°Talk 20:50, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I suppose it might be, if the class is a normal-ish word (maybe "antidepressant" without the "tricyclic" part). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yep - that's what I was thinking. "Tricyclic antidepressant" is the class but the common use would be "depression". Some antibiotics might have fields like (say, vancomycin: bacterial infections including MRSA). I think that's very useful information and for many years have wished it was included because as a reader I'm much more familiar with the reasons for a drug than the class. I think that there is likely to be ample information out there about sourcing and like anything here there is the potential for conflict but I personally think because this is a useful thing to include for our readers, those two reasons shouldn't prevent its inclusion. --Tom (LT) (talk)
 * To WAID's point, the drug class is not always a normal-ish word, e.g. Amlodipine's class is listed as calcium channel blocker, and it's commonly used to treat hypertension and heart disease. Regarding MEDRS citations, I don't see this as much different from listing disease info in Infobox medical condition. From a few arbitrary spotchecks, it looks like some disease articles include citations in the infobox, while others include it only for numbers (presumably to make fact-checking and updating easier). I think I can get behind either. Ajpolino (talk) 05:12, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What are the general guidelines for what should be in/out of an infobox and its style? I would have thought that terseness and clearly defined categorisation would be important rather than sentences or vagueness. I'm worried that "common use" is open to interpretation by Wikipedians unless we agree perhaps on an authority source to decide. Lots of drugs have several commons use and it can be hard to know which are actually important enough to go in a box or how to describe that in a couple of words. We may end up with a term for the drug use that isn't particularly lay-friendly but is very precise, and I can deal with that because, you know, the lead sentence of the drug article explains what the drug is, what it is for, and in a lay-friendly way, so we don't need to try to cram that into a two inch wide box just to the right of it.
 * Consider aspirin, amitriptyline and carbamazepine. These treat pain, depression and epilepsy respectively. But actually today are those the primary uses? I don't know anyone who buys aspirin for pain: ibuprofen and paracetamol seem to have replaced it. Amitriptyline is not recommended for depression in my BNF, and is instead used for neuropathic pain. Carbamazepine gets used for other nervous-system issues and I don't really know which is the primary prescription or retail purpose for these medications. The ATC code seems to be an attempt to combine both chemical, biological and therapeutic properties, yet we fill the infobox with a meaningless code (I know some folk will find it useful). Carbamazepine's code is Nervous system / Antiepileptics / Carboxamide derivatives. Amitriptyline's code is Nervous system / Psychoanaleptics / Antidepressants / Non-selective monoamine reuptake inhibitors. Amlodipine is Cardiovascular system / Selective calcium channel blockers with mainly vascular effects / Dihydropyridine derivatives. Aspirin has a few ATC codes, but we can see for the others, someone else has decided which is the primary use for categorisation.
 * It seems to me that expanding the ATC code, if we are permitted to do that wrt copyright/etc, would provide an excellent summary of various characteristics of the drug that aren't currently in the infobox or lead. I know many of those terms are not primary-school-level words, but they are also all terms that a reader of the article (assuming the article is comprehensive) will learn, and can be wikilinked. -- Colin°Talk 10:03, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think terseness/clear categorization are both good goals for an infobox, but I don't think everything in the infobox needs to be data that we can scrape en masse from an authoritative source. Check Infobox medical condition for various disease articles and you'll see human-input fields that are generally short but understandable summaries of some key facts about the disease. The ATC codes remind me of the Gene ontology codes that automatically show up in Infobox gene, see e.g. p53 (you'll have to expand the gene ontology bar). Each code notes a key attribute of the protein, which is nice. But I think something with a more human touch might give the reader a better sense of what the protein is doing. I completely agree that "common use" is open to disagreement, and I don't relish having those disagreements, but I'm not hopeful that there's a perfect field to add in its place. I think this is a perfect vs. good situation. If we can only separate the links and chemical data from the current infobox, I'll be thrilled. If we can then add a few more-accessible fields, that would be nice. If some of our added fields backfire, they can always be revisited. Ajpolino (talk) 17:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Useful links

 * Infobox drug
 * Infobox drug
 * -- is in 7251 articles
 * Inspiration & examples
 * Infobox medical condition and Medical resources
 * &rarr; similar: Drug links (developing)
 * &rarr; similar: Drug links (developing)


 * Parallels in
 * Chembox (has section-structure, old)
 * Chembox Pharmacology (, 464 articles)

Background
Some background by the current form of (as I met it during the last six years I did maintenance, template-techical). Most changes into current data presentations were requested (advocated) by specialists indeed, as OP Ajpolino noted. Hence the many external links to specialist databases (as opposed to FDA, EMA reader-relevant ones; more below). Hence also the large "Clinical" subsection in the infobox: looks this way because, like, "It's nice to have this data at hand in my clinic". For example, I think drug classicfications like ATC better be in a different subheader & subsection.

At the moment, existing issues in are:
 * Issue 1: Both FDA and EMA external links are broken. Both API's changed, and we didn't find a new solution yet (API=automated access to their site, e.g. to link to the an Aspirin page on the EMA site). Also has the question: to which subpage to link? Preferably a Wiki-readers interest, not their scientific studies sitepage. This said, we write for our Reader as an encyclopedically interested one, not a self-doctoring reader looking for a recipy.
 * Issue 2: There is an option to enter two chemicals (eg Peramivir has 2 CAS numbers )&mdash; which is not the same as a combination drug . I note that this 2-chemicals option is not developed completely; some ID's like UNII cannot be doubled. The max number is only 2. No merge between multi-chemical and combination-drug is going on.
 * Issue 3: has the CheMoBot verification system, adding  the ✅/ icons & their links. IMO this system, aimed to have article versions authorised (verified), could be removed from . AFAIK, not many editors use it to improve data trust. In a separate discussion this system could be abandoned.
 * Issue 4: (some good news too:) Chembox has drugbox-like sections like Chembox Pharmacology . This option has prevented many talkpage wars on which infobox to use in the article, Chem or Drug? Of course, this setup could be evaluated for this development.

-DePiep (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2021 (UTC)


 * For Issue #4, do you think that some of the edit-warring potential could be reduced by having separate boxes, e.g., a pharma-focused box that goes in a ==Medical uses== section or a chem-focused box that goes in a ==Chemistry== section?
 * In general, I like the idea of putting the "standard" external links at the end of the page, but if other people have better ideas, then I defer to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Not "edit-warring", but "talkpage-warring", which is better ;-) ;-).
 * A lot of datapoints (infobox-lines) are similar between Chembox and Drugbox. For example CAS-number, molecule-image, chemical structure details. Also, some chemicals are an illegal drug, which chemical nature does not know about. For a chemical compound, being a drug is just a detail, does not change chemical data.
 * My preference would be: allow both in both templates, keep data presentation similar as long as possible (eg, use same formatting). Technically, this could be done by using more layers of templates/modules. (Oh, so few hours in a day) -DePiep (talk) 22:06, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Boghog (talk) 23:26, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Issue #1: EMA and FDA not only provide prescribing information, but also a lot of other useful data that is definitely encyclopedic.
 * Issue #2: Peramivir has two CAS numbers not because it is combination drug (it is not). But because there are different forms (parent structure, hydrates, salts, etc.).  Including more than one CAS number might be justified for example to denote the parent and the salt form that is commonly used in formulations.
 * Issue #3: I could not more strongly disagree. Removing verification information about a data point is a really bad idea.  Unfortunately infobox data can easily be vandalized and therefore verification check is a welcome addition.
 * OK. So, re Issue #1: EMA and FDA: see
 * re re Issue #2: "combination drug" is not "multiple chemical compound" drug. Answered once and for all, we'll have to manage this in our WP.
 * re re Issue #3: I slightly disagree, needs a serious discussion then, but not within this topic redesign, IMO.
 * Thanks Boghog. -DePiep (talk) 00:14, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

(new)
We are currently working on the new Drug links template. It is supposed to handle non-infobox (split out) data links etc. See the list of possibloe data entries :-) Please keep thinking about our info presentation. -DePiep (talk) 03:24, 31 January 2021 (UTC)


 * @DePiep, I (really) like what I see so far, but it's a bit hard for me to parse. Could you please set up an example in the /doc page (or here) for a specific drug? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Will do. It's chaotic sure such an initial startup. :-) -DePiep (talk) 01:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks like most of what's in the template at the moment is from the old one, but these pieces work (I'm using aspirin as my example):
 * WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, kudos as always for your effortful work on templates :). Could this information just be included in a mixture of Medical resources and Authority control? I personally fully support taking lots of this sort of information out of the infobox (where it occupies valuable screen real estate) to somewhere else of lesser prominence on articles (where the smaller group of readers who use it can still access it). --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:01, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A note to all watching, I've started a discussion at Template talk:Drug links to discuss which links should be moved. Please head there to contribute! Ajpolino (talk) 02:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Discussing related disorders that don't have their own articles
Greetings to WPMED. I've just written 17q12 microdeletion syndrome, a slim but hopefully comprehensive volume on a little-known but interesting syndrome. One thing I haven't seen addressed in MEDMOS or similar is the protocol for rare related disorders that would perhaps be a bit superfluous as their own articles, but seem worthy of note in another. I'm specifically wondering if 17q12 microduplication syndrome -- which has ~20 or so recorded cases and is virtually always discussed in the same breath as the far more common microdeletion -- could go as a section in the microdeletion's article, or if it would be better as either its own article or not discussed on Wikipedia at all. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 13:09, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If there are sufficient reliable sources, but not much to say about it, given their relatedness, then I think it's fine to have it as a subsection on the other article. You could even set up a redirect to that subsection. Bondegezou (talk) 15:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Vaticidalprophet, one of the things I've done is to redirect the smaller subject and then make a "not to be confused with" statement at the end of the lead. It might say something like "17q12 microdeletion syndrome involves a different type of change in the same gene as 17q12 microduplication syndrome, which is characterized instead by 1, 2, and 3."  I would recommend that even if you make a whole ==section== about the microduplication syndrome.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
 * IMHO, OMIM is a reliable source. Also, if OMIM has an entry on a genetic disease, I would argue that disease merits it's own Wikipedia entry. Both OMIM and Wikipedia are encyclopedias; it makes a ton of sense that everything in OMIM deserves a Wikpedia entry. Both 17q12 deletion and duplication syndromes are in OMIM. The duplication entry is . The deletion entry is . OMIM doesn't nuance it with the "micro" prefix, so I would add disambiguation to the page title. Jaredroach (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Non-bitey template about med sourcing for good-faith users



 * ✅ : convenience links: Symbol_redirect_vote.svg Template:Uw-medrs    doc page: Symbol_redirect_vote.svg Template:Uw-medrs/doc

Is there already a gentle user warning template out there that's non-WP:BITEy, intended for use on a User talk page for the case where a user attempted to add sourcing to a MED article in good faith, but the source doesn't meet WP:MEDRS? We don't want to discourage users from following WP:V and WP:RS, but at the same time, we want them to go the extra mile and follow WP:MEDRS. I come across this not infrequently, including just now. This time, I hand-rolled this message at a user talk page in an attempt to thank them for their contributions, explain why I had to revert them, and gently introduce them to MEDRS. This situation comes up with some regularity, and may benefit from a template. Here's one: ( subst-protection to be added later ):

Entering generates:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles  where you added a citation to a source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! Unfortunately, in articles related to medical topics the standard for content and sourcing is even higher than for articles in general, and the references you added did not meet that standard, and may have been removed. Please have a look at WP:MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WP:WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page.

- If it's a mixed bag and they sometimes did the right thing and sometimes not, you can do this:
 * to generate:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles  where you added a citation to a source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! Unfortunately, in articles related to medical topics the standard for content and sourcing is even higher than for articles in general, and the references you added did not meet that standard, and may have been removed. Please have a look at WP:MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WP:WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page.

Draft #3 examples:


 * Entering with no params generates:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles  where you added a citation to a source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS, and the references you added unfortunately did not meet that ideal and may have been removed. Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources.


 * Entering generates:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles  where you added a citation to a source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS, and the references you added unfortunately did not meet that ideal and may have been removed. Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources.

If it's a mixed bag and they sometimes did the right thing and sometimes not, you can do this: Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles  where you added a citation to a source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS, and the references you added unfortunately did not meet that ideal and may have been removed. Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources.
 * to generate:

Draft #4 examples:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles   In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS,   Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Invoking  with no params generates:

If they made no attempt to add sources, you can use param sourced=no:
 * Note that no is the default, so this generates the same text as the no-params version above:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles   In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS,   Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Invoking  generates:

If they made an attempt to add sources, you can use param sourced=yes to alter the wording: Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles   In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS,   Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Invoking  generates:

Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles   In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS,   Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Entering generates:

If it's a mixed bag and they sometimes did the right thing and sometimes not, you can do this: Hi, I'm Mathglot. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you recently made additions to articles   In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at WP:MEDRS,   Please have a look at MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. You might also want to take a look at WikiProject Medicine. If you have any questions related to sourcing of medical issues, you can ask at the WikiProject Medicine Talk page. For general questions about sourcing, see Reliable sources. Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * to generate:

I wasn't thinking of the proposed template as a "welcome"-style template, more of a stand-alone, but as a comparison for portions of the boilerplate text, see for example Welcomeunsourced or welcome-suboptimal for ideas about wording. If there's already a "gentle medrs" template already, please point me to it. If not, feedback on this one appreciated. Feel free to modify the text of the Draft template directly, if you wish, Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:46, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * well done --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Draft #2. Updated example above, and added a new one, after tweaking wording a bit, and adding a couple of optional params. Mathglot (talk) 01:54, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this, @Mathglot. Technically, MEDRS isn't supposed to be a "higher standard", so you might rephrase that part.  All articles are supposed to be primarily WP:Based upon independent and secondary sources, with Due weight given to higher quality sources, and MEDRS's goal is to explain what that means in the context of biomedical information, rather than setting a higher standard.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * thanks for the comments, especially the distinction of biomed context vs "higher" standards. I still consider myself an advanced beginner, MED-wise, and you're much more familiar with this whole area than I am; if I rephrase, I might still get it less than optimal. I trust your judgement; do you want to just go ahead and update the Draft directly? If you'd rather not, if you can suggest some wording, I can add it. Thanks again, Mathglot (talk) 03:45, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Good work on continuously working to make notifications informative whilst as non-bitey (gummy?) as possible. I wonder whether it's worth more commonly including worked examples (or links to examples, or examples in collapsed sections) in these sorts of notices or in the sections of WP:MEDRS (similar to WP:MEDRS)? I suspect these are useful for a lot of people who are new to WP's policy landscape. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 03:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , can you elaborate? If you mean, creating a /doc page for the template, then absolutely; I just didn't want to spend the time to do so now if consensus ends up against having hte template, or if it's a duplicate. If we release the template, then I will definitely create a /doc page. (If you go to the template now, there's on-page mini-doc. Feel free to expand it; it could become the basis for a forthcoming /doc page.) Or, are you talking about the kind of examples commonly seen in the "Examples" section of the /doc pages on certain templates, such as, say, this one, and you want to add them here in WP:MEDRS somewhere? Or, something else? Mathglot (talk) 03:45, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Sandy, is this something you might use, and can you suggest (or make) improvements to the wording? If you go directly to the Draft template page (here) you can see basic usage examples with optional params listed. Would you add more params, change them, name them differently? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:00, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, . I wish I could engage more fully to help you copyedit that template, but my back pain all week has been considerable, and I am unable to type for extended periods. I DO deeply appreciate any work towards making friendlier templates, and am glad to see that you have continued the effort started by .   My overall impressions are three-fold:
 * I wonder how often the various options will be engaged? In my experience, when an editor needs to be given a cluestick pointing at MEDRS, most of their edits use faulty sourcing, and it is rare to be able to point out a good one.  I am wondering if others have different experiences, and whether the template would be simplified by focusing only on the problematic edits ... I recognize that my experience could be atypical because I tend to follow more Featured articles, which require the highest quality sourcing-- that is, they go beyond the basics of MEDRS.  I would be curious to hear from others on this, as my experience could be atypical.
 * I echo WhatamIdoing's concern about the "higher"standard wording; that is subtly off, as WAID points out. It's not a "higher" standard, rather MEDRS explains how RS applies to biomedical content. Perhaps some of the summary wording at the top of WP:MEDRS would be helpful instead? The discussion here goes in to more detail on that portion.
 * I would adjust some of the "tone" of the writing, although I am not in a state to help with copyediting just now, with considerable back pain. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! Unfortunately, in articles related to medical topics the standard for content and sourcing is even higher than for articles in general, and the references you added did not meet that standard, and may have been removed. Please have a look at WP:MEDRS to learn about the quality standards for medical sourcing. Thanking a new editor for respecting policy seems odd ... a different way to phrase that ?  "Unfortunately" seems odd ... no need to apologize for our guidelines!  "Please have a look" ... I prefer more straightforward approach, eg, the standards for medical sourcing are explained at MEDRS.
 * I'm sorry to be of limited help here; hopefully by the time you have a next draft, I will be more able to sit at the computer for longer time periods. Best, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Sandy, that is indeed helpful. I'm going to follow the links and try to make some changes based on what you and WAID are saying. Point by point:
 * various options – all the parameters are optional, and are available to generate wording more targeted to the individual user, but don't have to be used. The part about "pointing out a good one" was to try to sweeten the message by not having it be purely critical in tone; in my hand-rolled messages, whenever I point out something to a user that amounts to a criticism of something they did wrong, I try to accompany that by pointing out what they are doing right, whenever possible, and this was in that spirit. The params about "good edits' don't have to be used, they're just there when needed, but they can be removed from the template if that's the consensus. As to the FA issue, I'm eager to hear more about that, and to consider whether wording could be added in in some way to deal with it (optional param yes adds some verbiage about the meaning and implications of a FA article?)
 * "higher standard" – I hear you, and WAID, and recognize that the term higher standard must be changed; I'll remove that and hopefully WAID or someone will find a better way to phrase that.
 * "unfortunately" – For sure;; if that word stays at all, it has to be attached to the explanation of the revert (i.e., "...unfortunately, I had to undo it, because...") as I have seen in low-level user warning templates, and somehow snuck in there in the wrong place. The part about thanking them for respecting policy: that's kind of an echo of "thank you for your contributions", but I think I get what you're saying; we don't thank people who stop at a red light. This was another aspect of my trying to "gentle" the template, by softening criticism by including positive strokes where possible. In the choice of wording for the template originally, you can see echoes of my worries about editor retention, which may account for some of my misfires; I've seen some editors get discouraged at what seems like criticism on their page and even wonder "why bother sticking around" and so on, and I'm trying to make sure that the message isn't unrelentingly critical, and makes it clear we welcome them and want them to do well here.
 * I'll go make a few tweaks shortly, and update the collapsed examples. I'm wondering if this discussion threatens to get too long here on WT:MED; shall I move it to the Talk page of the Draft template itself, and leave a link to it? Thanks again for all the feedback, and keep it coming, Mathglot (talk) 19:50, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Made one small tweak to deal with "unfortunately", which, unfortunately, was modifying the wrong clause. The word is still there, but pushed back and used properly now, I believe. See what you think (diff). This change does not yet address the "higher standard" issue, for which I'm following the subsequent discussion. Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I disagree that "higher standard" is incorrect nor that it's misleading or harmful - in fact I think it needs to be explicitly stated that there is a higher standard - even a higher standard than that for BLP information. Uncontroversial information in BLPs can be sourced to many things - but even uncontroversial medical information must be sourced to medical sources. It is a higher standard - for medical information, regular reliable sources, no matter how reliable, are not necessarily in compliance with MEDRS. The classic example is citing a news article about some drug/treatment/etc for a sentence about its efficacy - that's not MEDRS compliant and thus not allowed even though it may be a perfect RS for non-medical content. I don't have much of a comment on the wording because I'm not super experienced with the uw series of templates and their styles/lengths/etc, but I will point everyone to what I did a few months ago to try and start this "new editor help" - I never had the time to work on it more but maybe it would be of some help. FAQ page and welcome template. I'll try to keep popping in and offering opinions on easy-to-opine topics, but I doubt I'll have much time soon for any sort of major writing/etc. Regards -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 18:37, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * (Reexamining my previous response per ec and User:Berchanhimez's comments.) Mathglot (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A different word than higher standard is needed. MEDRS defines what a primary, secondary, etc source is for biomedical content ... the standards are still the standards. MEDRS just better defines primary, secondary etc for biomedical content.  I suspect this problem can be resolved by using the same language used at WP:MEDRS, which refers to ideal sources ...  The problem is that we have seen editors delete content that is supported by reliable sources when it could be supported by the underlying literature, and that is not on. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  20:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah - I'm not necessarily opposed to words other than "higher", but maybe "more stringent" or something else would be better. I don't think "higher" is inaccurate - it is higher, because not all secondary reliable sources are secondary reliable sources for medical information - again, the news article example - RS but not MEDRS. While I appreciate the desire to not make it seem like there's "two different standards", I think this is impossible - because there are two standards - and in fact, there's many standards. For another example of this, WP:CONTROVERSIAL requires "high-quality" reliable sources - which implies a higher standard than simply RS in general. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 20:19, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Not all secondary reliable sources are secondary reliable sources for political information, either. It doesn't matter what your field of interest is; a secondary source that's reliable for one field might be useless in another.  We do not cite even top-tier accounting journal articles to say who's dating whom, we do not cite medical journals to say who won an election, and we do not cite physics journals to say whether a drug is effective.  Picking a source that is relevant to the subject is not a matter of having "higher" or "more stringent" standards for some subjects and lower or less stringent standards for other subjects; it's a a matter of garden-variety reliability, and it applies to every subject area.  A source is not reliable, according to Reliable sources itself, unless the source is "an appropriate source for that content".  MEDRS tells editors which types of sources are appropriate for biomedical information.  "Appropriate" is not exactly "higher".  Also, compare the similar efforts for other subject areas, such as Identifying reliable sources (history).  MEDRS is not actually more stringent than the ideal for other areas of scholarly research.  We're just more active at enforcing appropriate sources for health content – largely because of the efforts of the volunteers in this group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps something along the lines of "more tightly defined standards" might work? --RexxS (talk) 21:38, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * heading the right direction, but are we “more” tightly defined than other areas, eg history? Sandy Georgia (Talk)  21:43, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "...tightly targeted to standards described at WP:MED WP:MEDRS " ? Mathglot (talk) 22:06, 9 February 2021 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:MEDRS (community-wide guideline), not WP:MED (all of us here).
 * I helped kill the HISTRS proposal a few years ago (IMO it didn't reflect actual practice enough), but MEDRS would probably not have been more tightly defined. But I think RexxS has put us on the right track.  What do you think about simply saying that they're "defined"?  Maybe something like "In articles related to medical topics, the standard for content and sourcing is defined at MEDRS. The references you added did not meet that ideal, and may have been removed" (only with suitable links, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Like, Sandy Georgia (Talk)  23:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

This seems to be generating enough interest that an eventual move to Template space seems likely. I've created a /doc page to go with it; convenience link at the top of this section. Feel free to update the /doc as needed. Mathglot (talk) 02:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Updated the examples above for Draft #3, incorporating WhatamIdoing's suggestion. Still a work in progress (and still a wiki, so feel free to update it directly). Mathglot (talk) 03:59, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

As someone who is attempting to learn about the differences an nuances, and seeing very inconsistent sourcing which makes it even more challenging, I just want to say that I appreciate this effort. Thank you. DrGvago (talk) 05:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * What we see in articles does not match our ideals. It sometimes does not even match the very lowest standards.   We have improved the average standard over the years (see what the article Cancer looked like on the day that WikiProject Clinical Medicine was founded), and we hope that we will eventually do better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

higher stricter defined targeted ideal
I don't wish to take a side in the discussion about how best to describe the MEDRS standard as higher or stricter or whatever; rather, I'll just implement whatever the consensus appears to be. For draft #3, I did use WAID's suggestion just to get some forward movement, although I realize there isn't full support for that. If this word becomes a sticking point and consensus seems unlikely, we could parameterize it with a param allowing the substitution of any of these words (or any other), with some kind of bland default avoiding the use of any of them.

In the meantime, does the template and the doc page seem mature enough now that we can move it to Template space, and carry on the discussion on its talk page in order to work out the exact wording and any other issues? That would make the template available for use now on user talk pages. If so, we need a stable name for the template; I'm thinking the 'gentle' in the name is maybe overkill; so how does everyone feel about just, "Template:Uw-medrs" as the name? Or, should we keep the name as is, or something else? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Getting closer ! But no idea what is meant by “adding a citation to a source”?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  00:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , as in, "added a citation [pointing to/documenting/indicating] a [reliable] source". Or, "added a citation to a reliable book, journal, or website"? Or, "included a citation to a source"?  Or, how would you word this? Mathglot (talk) 03:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I suggest placing the article names in parenthesis instead of in the sentence, which otherwise is a run on. I would also add an optional "comment" parameter to be used to append a customized piece of text. Perhaps also include code to auto-sign for the user placing the warning, since uw templates are supposed to be substituted always? This would allow a user to simply type to do it all in one fell swoop. The only other feedback I have is whether this is intended to be a single-issue notice (per WP:UW), the first level of a multilevel notice (which I presume would fold in to disruptive editing or other higher level templates), or what. I personally think it wouldn't be a bad idea to have three templates - this as a uw-1, a more severe uw-2, and a general single-issue notice for people who don't necessarily need escalating warnings. I defer to others on that point though, as my experience at warnings is just what Twinkle gives me. Also also, if anyone would just like me to code/add any of the suggestions I made I'm happy to try and find some time to do so. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:11, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Berchanhimez, we can make it auto-sign without a parameter, and adding a comment param is no problem. I had also thought of uw-2 and uw-3, but I thought that it would be better to see if there was any interest in having even one message, rather than overload the discussion right at the outset with too many options.  Might I suggest we wind up this one template, and then once it stabilizes (with any follow-up changes to wording after launch), then revisit the question of uw-2 and 3? Mathglot (talk) 03:35, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , I agree. I think though, it would be useful to visit that question with at least an idea - because whether it is going to be a single use warning/message versus an escalating one will help determine how "tough" to be in it. If this is designed to be a uw-1 followed by a uw-2 and possibly beyond, then I think this is great as is (with the comment param added). That being said, if this is designed to be a single issue warning/message, I think it needs to be a little more detailed as to the requirements/consequences. This is just from what I've seen comparing single issue things in Twinkle with escalating things - but as is, this is a great start. And as you say, it can always be revisited later on :) -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:45, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , yes, that makes sense. Since at the outset, I wanted above all a "gentle" version, almost a uw-0 (!), then let's say that there will likely be two more message levels following this one (given consensus for that) so that this version can be a gentle level-1. I'm definitely on board with two more after this one settles. (That said, I'm not a Twinkle user, so any hints/differences that are relevant, please pass them on.) Mathglot (talk) 03:50, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , okay there's a new version out there (let's call it, "3.1") with changes as I understood them from this recent exchange. It includes auto-sign, and the new comment parameter. Sandy, not quite sure yet about how to address your "citing a source" issue, but I added one more word in there. I can fix it up further after you see this. (Or feel free to edit it yourself.)
 * I haven't altered the examples in the collapse bar above, which still has (old) Draft 3 examples; but you can run your own tests in your sandbox or wherever, by copy/pasting from the 'Usage' or 'Examples' sections of the documentation. Let me know your suggestions. I think we're getting close, too, and can probably launch soon, and work out any final adjustments on the template Talk page after launch. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 04:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that we need multiple different levels. We're not talking about people who are vandalizing articles and who might need to be blocked.  We're talking about people who are genuinely trying to help and who might benefit from being told a few things about Wikipedia that we have already learned.  We're trying to give them a hand up the learning ladder.  We're not trying to smack them down.
 * If you need to remind someone a second time, then try writing a personal message. There's some reason to believe that a personal message might even be more effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

multiple levels
, after you mentioned levels (above) I realized that the wording in the beginning of the template makes the assumption that they have added citations that are at least RS-compliant, even if not MEDRS-compliant. But if this is the level one warning of a series, it will need to cover the case where they didn't try to enter a source at all, or entered one that was neither MEDRS nor RS-compliant. We'll have to think about this; we might need to take out that sentence, or parametrize it. Maybe using the "no" from your example above. Mathglot (talk) 05:30, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm about to head to bed so can't do more than preview my idea: a parameter (yes) which would cause it to display only the differences between MEDRS and RS, and if that was no (or anything else) it would also include a sentence or two about sourcing in general. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 06:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Your wikicode isn't displaying what you meant, I don't think; were you going perhaps for this instead: "yes" ? In any case, I have no idea what "display[ing] only the differences between MEDRS and RS" means, or what sentences to include about sourcing in general. This almost sounds to me like a completely new template&mdash;which is fine&mdash;but this one is close, I think, to completion, and I'm eager to finish it and get it out there so it can be used. I'm fine with tweaking the wording to get it right, but this seems like a completely new direction or a new template. This one doesn't have to be 100% perfect, and can be fine-tuned after launch. And then we can talk about what this new idea is of yours, and figure out whether it's a new template, or an evolution of this one in a new direction. Does that seem reasonable? Mathglot (talk) 06:55, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it wasn't :P fixed now. My thoughts was this - yes would produce the text currently there: I noticed that you recently made additions to one or more articles where you added a citation to a reliable source. Thank you for respecting Wikipedia's policy on WP:Verifiability and for using citations! - perhaps with the word However after prior to the next sentence. no would remove those sentences and replace them with an explanation of WP:V and WP:RS before continuing - as an example (wording is probably crap and needs worked on): I noticed that you recently made edits to an article without citing a reliable source. Please note that all content and edits on Wikipedia are expected to be verifiable in reliable sources. or similar, then continuing to discuss biomedical information. If sourced=no, this would also have to be changed: and the references you added unfortunately did not meet that ideal and may have been removed - maybe to something like and in your edit you did not include any references that meet that ideal.
 * The goal here is to enable people to use this template for any MEDRS thing. Part of the reason the UW templates exist is because people like me are often too lazy to write out an "ok pls dont vandalize" message when undoing something on our watchlist - and for that to work, the template needs to cover all possibilities - sourced/unsourced, some good edits some bad, etc. I'm fine with it being moved into template-space now and this being worked on soon, but I think this should be completed sooner rather than later. Keep in mind that it may also be beneficial to get Twinkle developers involved to add this to Twinkle, as well as the wiki project for more opinions/advice/help. Overall though this is a really good job and I'm just happy to see some good forward progress towards caring about new editors' experience in medical topics :) -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 17:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * okay, I understand now, and that sounds like a necessary improvement; I'll do this later today. Mathglot (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , regarding sourced, which do you think should be the default: 'yes', or 'no'? Imho, the default should be the one corresponding to what most of the users deserving such a template have done to merit it. Which would that be, in your opinion? Mathglot (talk) 21:48, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think, as a uw-1 template, the default should be "neutral" - as in not include something one way or another. There are two ways to do this - either add a third option which is "in between" and doesn't mention sourcing at all, or simply tweak one of the existing ones to be completely "neutral" and use it. A third option may look like: I noticed you recently made some additions to an article which doesn't fully comply with our sourcing guidelines on Wikipedia. Verifiability of information in a reliable source is a key pillar of Wikipedia, and your edit did not include sufficient referencing to meet that standard. - covers both of the "yes/no" text I suggested above, and also doesn't say whether they included reliable sources, no sources, or what. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:25, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've added Draft 4 to the template examples above, so please have a look. I hadn't noticed your latest reply while I was preparing it, so the "neutral" wording is not there yet, but I'll tweak it further to do so. Mathglot (talk) 00:08, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , given 's comment (here), maybe let's hold off on deciding about levels and how it might further impact the template for now. Unless you have a strong objection to current operation, let's release it, and we can all take up further discussion at its Talk page. Are you okay with that? Mathglot (talk) 00:29, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , sure - I don't object to that at all :) -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 00:33, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Might have to make one more tweak; either there's a bug in the 'sourced' param, or Ipasted the wrong result into the Examples above. I'll just double-check that it's working, fix any problem, and then release it. I'll advise below when ready. Mathglot (talk) 00:41, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

✅. See Template:Uw-medrs, Template:Uw-medrs/doc, Template:Uw-medrs/testcases. Thanks for all the feedback, I think we have a useful template, and a good base for developing it further, if necessary, in Template space. Further discussion about this template should take place at the Template talk page. Mathglot (talk) 03:48, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion at Suicidal ideation
It has been proposed that Suicidal ideation be renamed and moved to Suicidal thoughts. There is a move discussion in progress at Talk:Suicidal ideation. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. Kolya Butternut (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:37, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

COVID-19
more opinions at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic appreciated--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)


 * This is a really important discussion. Thank you, Ozzie, for linking it here.  Please share your opinion.  (I plan to post mine later.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested edits
There are three WPMED-related pages with open requests for edits (use this query):


 * Talk:Georgina Long
 * Talk:MasSpec Pen
 * Talk:Steven M. Paul (it's not an RFC, despite the title)

The first two are making large requests, so I've split them into separate sections. That should make it easier if you only want to read and respond to one part. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 15 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I believe I have taken care of the Talk:Steven M. Paul issue. Or at least moved the ball forward. The whole article could use a new coat of paint, but that is an issue for another day. Jaredroach (talk) 02:23, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've taken care of the Georgina Long requests. They'd have required a little re-writing, but it turns out that they were all cut-and-paste copies from her CV and employer's website, so they'd have to go through the WP:DONATETEXT bureaucracy first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

MDPI journals and the role of WP:RSP in medical sourcing
I've had simmering unease about WP:RSP for a while. As an index of previous discussions at WP:RSN it's probably fine. But increasingly it seems to be used as a way to fetter editors' discretion in matters of sourcing (especially in the field of politics). Now however, it seems to be spilling over into decision which will affect medical sourcing, since there is a move to "soften" the existing entry on MDPI journals (predominantly biomedical) to say blandly "There is consensus that journals published by MDPI should be considered on a case by case basis", omitting any warning that this might be a borderline predatory publisher. The previous version of the text read:

The basis for softening this entry was this sparsely-attended discussion at RS/N, which apparently now stands for project-wide consensus. Medical editors with a view should contribute to the re-opened discussion at WP:RS/N. Alexbrn (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To be fair, the current entry on MDPI on RSP is much more negative than the corresponding WP:CITEWATCH entry. My main concern was that the 5 previously cited discussions, many of which are several years old did not justify the current RSP entry. Not that the RSP entry was necessarily wrong. I never got the impression that "MDPI" was primarily a biomedical publisher, they are currently the world's 5th largest publisher and world's largest open access publisher. MDPI is definitely borderline and I have serious concerns about the 7 day deadline meaning that they have a lacking peer review process. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think this is the right decision, Alex. I am uncomfortable with RSP because of the mindless way that it's been enforced.  We have editors voting to put newspapers into the "fabricates information" class when their comments and the evidence support only a label of "politically biased".  Editors will remove RSP's "deprecated" sources even if the source is used only about itself (because, hey, you can't expect me to actually read the sentence the source is associated with; I'm just looking at the highlighted colors from my source-removing script and trusting that the scripts are always right).
 * And since the publisher isn't the only factor that matters for reliability (the usual shorthand is that a blog post by Albert Einstein would be a reliable source), it seems odd to say that the publisher is the only thing we need to know about any of the articles published in any of these journals.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think pretty much everything needs a "case by case" assessment. But if we're going to say something about MDPI, we should at least say why it's a potentially problematic publisher. The problem with RSP, as I see it, is that although it notionally has no WP:PAG force, it is being used as a trump card in source discussions. And if entries are being decided just by brief discussions at RSN this is likely to cause problems in the longer term. Alexbrn (talk) 20:26, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The original purpose of RSP was to help save time as a guide for items that have been discussed enough at RSN so there probably shouldn't be an entry about items only discussed once or twice. I didn't check how many times this publisher was discussed but I mention it since I saw "decided just by brief discussions" above.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 21:33, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The inclusion criteria for the RSP states: For a source to be added to this list, editors generally expect two or more significant discussions about the source's reliability in the past, or an uninterrupted request for comment on the source's reliability that took place on the reliable sources noticeboard. For a discussion to be considered significant, most editors expect no fewer than two qualifying participants for RSN discussions where the source's name is in the section heading, and no fewer than three qualifying participants for all other discussions. Qualifying participants are editors who make at least one comment on the source's reliability. In my own experience only discussions that actually occur on the reliable sources noticeboard count for this number. Arguably these numbers could be made higher, but I also see the RSP as an index of highly cited sources as well as a guide of reliability. The RSP should not be taken as some sort of gospel for the reliability of sources and discussions about specific instances of a source should be judged by their contents and context. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * IMO it would be an improvement if the requirement was two significant discussions before the "uninterrupted" (what does that mean?) RFC can even be started. Some of those RFCs have been preemptive strikes against sources that nobody has disputed and nobody is using, but an editor thought it would be helpful to expand the RSP list.  There are approximately 200 million (live) websites.  RSP would break if we tried to list even 0.01% of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

File:Parasagittal MRI of human head in patient with benign familial macrocephaly prior to brain injury (ANIMATED).gif redux
Is there someone here well-versed enough in brain medicine to say whether the title of File:Parasagittal MRI of human head in patient with benign familial macrocephaly prior to brain injury (ANIMATED).gif is correct? I know that the file is on Commons but I have no idea where to contact medical editors there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:46, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * For reference, the earlier discussion is archived here. There isn't a way of contacting medical editors on Commons -- users on Commons don't tend to form wiki-projects or self-identify by profession or interests. I note that there is an OGV version of the file, which allows users to pause the animation. I'm no brain expert but I suspect a 256px gif without a scale, other metadata concerning the MRI, and the patient's age and height, is fairly useless with which to determine this is a case of Macrocephaly. The wiki article says this is a head circumference two standard deviations (SDs) above the mean.
 * The author uploaded it to Wikipedia with the name "Image:Structural.gif" and added it to several articles. One addition, to Macrocephaly has caption "An MRI of a patient with benign familial macrocephaly (male with head circumference > 60cm)" which would suggest the uploader was given a diagnosis. However, I googled the mean head circumference and found which suggests that 60cm is around the 95th percentile for a 178cm man, but someone taller could have a bigger head.
 * I also note an addition to Acquired brain injury with caption "Para-sagittal MRI of the head in a patient with benign familial macrocephaly before brain injury" and an addition to Intracranial aneurysm with caption "Para-sagittal MRI of the head in a patient with benign familial macrocephaly prior to aneurysm". There is no suggestion that the subject has a brain injury or aneurysm, only that the MRI illustrates what a brain without injury or aneurysm looks like. The "prior to" seems to be an attempt to fit the MRI into articles where it isn't really illustrative at all.
 * The file was renamed on Commons here to give the current name. Therefore I suggest that the "prior to brain injury" is actually a fault of misreading the caption in one article, and should be removed. As per previous discussion, we probably should take the macrocephaly adjective on good faith, though the image itself is of very little value IMO in illustrating such. If people agree about dropping the "prior to brain injury" bit, I can fix it on Commons.
 * Btw, radiographic images are very often copyvios. It isn't something that is well documented with case law, and some countries are clearer about what is required in order to create a "work of copyright". There was a big discussion on Commons many years ago about it, and it is most likely the image has copyright, which is owned by the hospital, not the patient. Generally, people keep quiet about that, because nobody wants to be the person who removed all the radiographic images from Wikipedia out of an abundance of caution over copyright. -- Colin°Talk 13:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I remember that discussion; my impression was that routine radiographic images were not copyrightable in the US because there was no creative element, but that the versions using film automatically had a copyright-like status in some countries. Whatever the status then, this appears to be settled law in the US now:  Chapter 300 of the US Copyright Office's manual (current version/revision date 28 January 2021), under the heading "Works That Lack Human Authorship" lists both "A photograph taken by a monkey" (a direct reference to the Monkey selfie copyright dispute) and "Medical imaging produced by x-rays, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging, or other diagnostic equipment".  The reason given for the latter is that it is "produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input".  Rad techs aren't supposed to be "creative"; they're supposed to follow the protocol as uncreatively as possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That's good if they have explicitly decided it in the US. Editors uploading scans taken elsewhere, such as Europe/UK, are on less certain ground. I seem to recall a Swedish admin was sure their law explicitly awarded copyright even for machine imaging. But I suspect hospital radiology departments have better things to do with their time than suing people for using the images. I did ask a medical journal about the copyright situation wrt photos in papers, and they replied that they assumed the authors of the papers had obtained the necessary permission. Copyright law is arbitrary, not rational (e.g. Freedom of panorama). -- Colin°Talk 17:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I recall a Swedish person vehemently declaring that the copyright was held personally by the rad techs and that even the hospital couldn't make a copy without the rad tech's permission. I was not persuaded by the assertion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * But what can you do? Legal stuff falls into an abyss where one side has legal expertise and says "Sorry I can't give legal advice" and another side has no expertise but is vigorously assertive. And they meet up with the factions on Wikipedia/Commons who want to play safe or who want to do whatever we can get away with. I tried to follow the "Well what do professionals do?" approach and that just disappointed me that the professionals weren't professional about this either. We end up paralysed. I mean, if one believes this scan, taken in the US, has no copyright, then the CC BY SA 3.0 and GFDL 1.2 licences are both invalid and should be replaced by a Public Domain assertion. The user's talk page has people asking for permission to use the image, though that partly may be courtesy because the uploader is the subject. -- Colin°Talk 10:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Technically, the main concern is about whether the title actually fits the image, not about its copyright status. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @Jo-Jo Eumerus, technically, the goal of an image in an article isn't to have the diagnosis right. It's to have something that shows the reader what the subject looks like.  If this looks like it, then it's fine.  If it doesn't, then it's not useful (even if we have gold-plated sources saying that it really is the thing being discussed). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I know we give extra leeway for images when it comes to sourcing, but being outright wrong seems like a problem even so. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The tradeoff is that you don't have to have a fight over whether a blob under a microscope is "really" that virus or not (real example).
 * Of course it'd usually be better to have the real thing, but the appearance, rather than the provenance, is the key point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Power nap/coffee nap


Since this may be of interest to this project I'm crosslinking a FTN discussion here:. Thanks, — Paleo Neonate  – 21:24, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:00, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move of Transgender hormone therapy (male-to-female)
A proposal to rename Transgender hormone therapy (male-to-female) (as well as the parallel article "Transgender hormone therapy (female-to-male) ) is being discussed. Your feedback would be appreciated at Talk:Transgender hormone therapy (male-to-female).  Thanks, Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 20:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Tinnitus masker article
is full of uncited material and very thin on sources generally. I'd be grateful if someone could review its content and remove the unsuitable material or can supply better sources. Thanks! GPinkerton (talk) 18:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:20, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

quick MEDRS question
This edit got reverted. Does MEDRS really apply in this situation? Also, is this just a UK thing or do you guys in other countries also use this notation? Dr. Vogel (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I do not believe that requires MEDRS sourcing. It is not "biomedical" information to discuss the meaning of a symbol in the medical field. If it expanded to discuss errors based on that symbol's usage or something, that may need MEDRS, but a simple definition I do not think would. Others' opinions may differ. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 21:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That was my rationale too. Dr. Vogel (talk) 21:56, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not versed enough on the Wiki aspect for sourcing so forgive me, but there may be uses in which context is important. It may have to do with test results or range in related to studies (eg: 42 ± 3 of years age) for a couple other examples that don't necessarily align with your edit. DrGvago 22:02, 10 February 2021‎ (UTC)
 * @DrVogel, whenever someone asks for a source, it's usually a good idea to give them a source. I'd ignore the "MEDRS" part and just put in a source that, in your best judgement, is a Reliable source for that particular content.  Also, as DrGvago points out, there might be multiple uses, any or all of which could be added. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not difficult to find examples of this use in WP:MEDRS such as pulmonary embolism with or without DVT (PE ± DVT) or pulmonary embolism with or without deep vein thrombosis (PE ± DVT). Finding a WP:MEDRS which states that this is common use would probably be considerably more difficult, however. TompaDompa (talk) 10:16, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Dr. Vogel: As an aside here, perhaps worth just pointing out that in medical papers ''[per "In experimental science..." on the current version of the page]'', the plus-or-minus symbol ( ± ) tends to get used quite *inappropriately* to signify a standard deviation / standard error of the mean (as historically outlined here by Doug Altman). Although widely deprecated as inappropriate and confusing − and something I've hated doing myself when obliged by editorial instructions-to-authors − this would seem to me (as a consumer of peer-reviewed articles) to be a rather prominent usage. Cheers, 86.186.155.131 (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, yes, that's what I'm worried about. Because inclusion in the sign's page, if MEDRS applies, would need a source saying it's in common use. Dr. Vogel (talk) 09:06, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * At any rate, I don't think the meaning of the ± sign in medicine constitutes WP:Biomedical information, and as such it doesn't require WP:MEDRS. TompaDompa (talk) 09:42, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've put it back, and I've used the sources that you found. Dr. Vogel (talk) 10:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

"Mental retardation" in Wikipedia's voice (copied message from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disability)
Hey! I am not an expert in medicine, but I notice that a couple of articles (Mental retardation and microcephaly with pontine and cerebellar hypoplasia and X-linked mental retardation for example) use the outdated term "mental retardation" for intellectual disabilities in the titles of articles. Both of which have been titled with "intellectual disability" but recently moved; the latter with the explanation that "Mental retardation should not be conflated with ID, they are two distinct concepts" (which contradicts the content at Intellectual disability) and "Mental retardation is the standard term in genetics and disease classification."

This seems to go against the style guide for pages on WP relating to intellectual disabilities. I have raised the issue over at WikiProject Disability and was advised to go here. --Bangalamania (talk) 22:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where I would find "the style guide for pages on WP relating to intellectual disabilities" as you didn't link it, so it's difficult to make any judgement. One course of action would be to read WP:Requested moves and carry out the instructions for "contested moves" for each article. That would allow a range of editors to comment and reach consensus on the best title. --RexxS (talk) 01:11, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think is referring to the WP:WikiProject Disability/Style advice page which describes the general shift (at least in English) away from "retard/retardation" in the last few decades. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That is what I was referring to; apologies I didn't specify. --Bangalamania (talk) 13:34, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is not a field I'm much familiar with, but from a quick skim through Pubmed it looks like "X-linked mental retardation" is now widely referred to as "X-linked intellectual disability". Lots of recent reviews have titles including the latter; none the former. Am I misunderstanding something? Otherwise I don't see how they're distinct concepts. Ajpolino (talk) 01:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that the article page was at that title until recently. --Bangalamania (talk) 13:34, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've informed the editor who moved the pages to their current title of this discussion.Nigel Ish (talk) 13:46, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We normally move articles to new titles with the ICD is updated.
 * It is true that at one point "intellectual disabilities" meant its plain English name: disabilities that affected intellect, regardless of cause.  That is no longer true.  It's possible that the editor didn't know that the terminology has moved on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is something I'm reasonably familiar with. Most of those conditions have been renamed 'intellectual disability X' and should have their pages moved as such, but some are still referred to as 'mental retardation X', or probably more accurately "haven't been referred to much at all since the formal terminology change" -- which is a bit messier. I'm inclined to refer to WikiProject Disability's style guides. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 13:28, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying this is true in this particular case, but there are sometimes conflicts between advice given by different WikiProjects. It is an uncomfortable fact that the larger and more active Wikiprojects may have the resources to promote their advice to a guideline, which enjoys site-wide consensus, while a smaller project's advice remains as an essay. If there were a conflict between WP:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles (a guideline), and WP:WikiProject Disability/Style advice (an essay), you wouldn't be in a strong position to insist that the essay overrides the guideline. So the solution, where the essay provides better or more pertinent advice than the guideline, is to open a debate and explain why the WikiProject Disability's style guide is better in that particular case, and that it represents an exception to the guideline. That's why I suggested to Bangalamania that they should should open a formal contested move request on each of the articles of concern. Once editors start to agree that removal of discriminatory language is more important in an encyclopedia article than adherence to the description in the OMIM database, there'll be less push-back in future. --RexxS (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying this is true in this particular case, but there are sometimes conflicts between advice given by different WikiProjects. It is an uncomfortable fact that the larger and more active Wikiprojects may have the resources to promote their advice to a guideline, which enjoys site-wide consensus, while a smaller project's advice remains as an essay. If there were a conflict between WP:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles (a guideline), and WP:WikiProject Disability/Style advice (an essay), you wouldn't be in a strong position to insist that the essay overrides the guideline. So the solution, where the essay provides better or more pertinent advice than the guideline, is to open a debate and explain why the WikiProject Disability's style guide is better in that particular case, and that it represents an exception to the guideline. That's why I suggested to Bangalamania that they should should open a formal contested move request on each of the articles of concern. Once editors start to agree that removal of discriminatory language is more important in an encyclopedia article than adherence to the description in the OMIM database, there'll be less push-back in future. --RexxS (talk) 15:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Just going to leave this here as well: Rosa's Law. Medicine in general quickly adopted this concept. Spyder212 (talk) 20:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Cataphylaxis


Hello, as usual, another orphaned medical stub. Can it be redirected, perhaps to the infection article? Or should it be retained standalone? &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 02:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Huh, it never occurred to me that anaphylaxis should have a lesser known counterpart. When people talk about that concept with respect to measles virus or (most prominently of course) HIV, they usually just say immune suppression, so maybe that's a good enough redirect target? Ajpolino (talk) 05:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The cited source (maybe a different edition of the dictionary) doesn't specify that an infection is involved. It gives two definitions:  "migration of leukocytes and antibodies to the site of an infection" and "the deterioration of the natural defense system of the body". I think this would cover generally weaker immune responses in frail elderly people.  A vet med dictionary gives this definition:  "deterioration of the body caused by an infection".  That sounds like it includes non-immunological effects (e.g., extreme weight loss).
 * The different definitions make me wonder whether a disambiguation page would be preferable.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Pelvic abscesses
On Lawson Tait, Pelvic abscess is a red link; to where should it redirect? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:52, 23 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I think we'll need more information. It could be something specific, like Tubo-ovarian abscess, or it could be just an Abscess that happens to be in the pelvic region. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Involuntary commitment material added in Italian
Information was added to Involuntary commitment by country in Italian. Does anyone know enough Italian to translate it. I would prefer not to just revert it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Involuntary_commitment_by_country&type=revision&diff=1008319484&oldid=997415901&diffmode=source. Talpedia (talk) 20:08, 23 February 2021 (UTC)


 * It appears to be a copy-and-paste duplicate of www.change.org/p/ministero-della-salute-far-diventare-illegale-il-tso-trattamento-sanitario-obbligatorio which may mean that we need an admin to revdel it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh well.... good spot. I've added a template. Talpedia (talk) 21:33, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've restored the last good version and revdeled (WP:RD1) the revisions carrying the copyvios. --RexxS (talk) 22:12, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @RexxS.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, @RexxS.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

RfC on editnotice policy
There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 to answer the question "Should admins have the ability to place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?" --RexxS (talk) 21:59, 23 February 2021 (UTC)


 * give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:43, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Upsetting images
There are some very distressing, prominent images on Cyclopia, which need to be moved with a warning so that people know not to look at them, perhaps a gallery at the end. I went there because of the recent baby shark stories. I immediately looked away when I realized what was on the page, so I can't read the article. Someone needs to fix this, please. Not sure who to ping. Trying,. SarahSV (talk) 04:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * One of my earliest edits here was trying to address a distressing prominent image on Trisomy 13 of the same condition. I replaced it with an adult phenotype of the disorder, but the cyclopia image is still lower in the article, which is the compromise that was being pushed for at the time. I wonder if it would be the same now.
 * There's definitely a complicated set of considerations with these sorts of disfigurements, especially the comparison case for "an article about that specific issue" (as Cyclopia) vs "an article about something that can cause that, but not necessarily" (as Trisomy 13). It's come up too with Smallpox, where the lead image is an unusually severe, visually distressing case. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 05:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well I replaced the lead image with an old drawing, which probably gets the features of cyclopia across better than the "human in a jar" image. In fact, I don't find the jar image (or the jar image at the bottom) to be particularly useful at illustrating anything. Either way, to the greater question of where to draw the line between "illustrative" and "gratuitously graphic" I'll defer to the more experienced folks here. Ajpolino (talk) 05:34, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing that. SarahSV (talk) 05:47, 25 February 2021 (UTC)